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Conferences Good And Bad, In A Profit-Driven Society

Nowadays researchers and scholars of all ages and specialization find themselves struggling with...

USERN: 10 Years Of Non-Profit Action Supporting Science Education And Research

The 10th congress of the USERN organization was held on November 8-10 in Campinas, Brazil. Some...

Baby Steps In The Reinforcement Learning World

I am moving some baby steps in the direction of Reinforcement Learning (RL) these days. In machine...

Restoring The Value Of Truth

Truth is under attack. It has always been, of course, because truth has always been a mortal enemy...

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Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

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The Say of the Week: Veltman on the Standard Model Higgs

The Say of the Week: Veltman on the Standard Model Higgs

Feb 02 2010 | comment(s)

"Why three families ? Why the particular symmetry structure ? [...] If the Higgs particle turns out to exist as conventionally described, with a reasonably low mass (say less than 200 GeV) then that closes the Standard Model from a mathematical point of view. It is then quite conceivable that new physics, not contained in the Standard Model, will be way beyond the reach of any accelerator imaginable today. In this case, humanity might never get an answer to the questions posed above."

M.Veltman, Reflections on the Higgs System (1997).
Still Occasionally Brilliant

Still Occasionally Brilliant

Feb 01 2010 | comment(s)

As I quickly approach my forty-fourth birthday, I can almost feel the decline in my mental and physical abilities. Sure, I try to oppose it, but it is arguably an uphill fight.

One of the means I have to gauge the line-up of my neurons is to play blitz games in the Internet Chess Club: my Elo rating is still rather stable on the ICC, although the rate of blunders per game seems to increase. When I play a nice tactical combination, however, I have the feeling of rejuvenating: it is just as if somebody injected some magical youth potion in my veins, for a while.
Exotic Hadrons: There Is The Rub!

Exotic Hadrons: There Is The Rub!

Jan 31 2010 | comment(s)

Last Friday I was in Pisa, at the Scuola Normale Superiore (see picture), where italian members of the CMS Collaboration gathered for two days to discuss the status of their studies, exchange ideas, and try to coalesce common analysis efforts.
The Fascinating Search For Rare W Decays

The Fascinating Search For Rare W Decays

Jan 30 2010 | comment(s)

W bosons are amazingly interesting objects. Almost thirty years after their discovery -by Carlo Rubbia and his collaborators of the UA1 experiment at CERN- they continue to provide critical information on the theory of electroweak interactions. The front of particle physics has moved quite a bit further from 1983, and yet the weapons we use todat to try and conquer unexplored land have not changed much. Today I wish to summarize one particular search that has been done by the CDF experiment at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, one which tries to catch W bosons as they decay in a very uncommon way.
What's Going On Around

What's Going On Around

Jan 27 2010 | comment(s)

I have been lagging behind lately with my usual browsing of other physics blogs. So let me catch up here and suggest a few posts which should be interesting to read.

  • Peter Woit is always an extremely well-informed source of information. In a post titled "The Entropy Decade" he recently discussed how the 2010s appear to show a trend: entropy appears to be a concept that will yield more information about the universe and fundamental physics. In another he has a wealth of information on recent articles and sources.
Note to self: get in touch with old friends

Note to self: get in touch with old friends

Jan 27 2010 | comment(s)

I have many friends around the world. Some of them are far away, some live close by; but it is not the spatial separation what determines how often we meet, talk, or spend time together: it is rather a combination of chance, will, and expendiency. There are friends who live one block away which I have not seen in ages, since we do not even bump into each other, as we get out to work and return home at different times of the day. And friends who live in another continent, which I meet every time I travel there. And the Internet has simplified things, but not entirely removed the problem.